In this article, we’ll discuss some of the considerations specific to shooting court sports — volleyball, and basketball. These are usually indoors, but the same principles apply when they are played outside.

Volleyball

I’m going to assume that you are basically familiar with the game and are just looking for advice on how to capture the best angles.

One thing that is important – the ability of the players with respect to the height of the net; this is going to influence their style of play.

Smaller and shorter players are going to play less aggressively on the offense — no big jumping / spiking shots from above the net — and slower on the defense (since the spikes are not as hard, they are going to be slower, and more looping over the net). Most of the “spikes” will land farther back, which will push the defense towards the back line.

The formation of the players, however, is not going to change much, so most of the angles for shooting will be the same.

Here’s a list of great “shots” you should try for:

• The serve
• The serve receive
• Setting for the hitter
• Outside hitter
• Inside hitter
• The dig
• Setter to middle hitter
• The double block

And, for advanced high school, or college players – there is also hitting off the 10-foot line.

A few words about backgrounds

One of the best things you can do for your backgrounds is to get some height, and lose some depth of field. Since most gymnasiums are barely-lit caves anyway, you’re probably shooting wide open (at your widest aperture) or close to it, so that takes care of the depth of field.

Getting some height – you hope that the bleachers are close enough that with the lenses you have, the players are not too far away.

Gear

Most of my volleyball shots have been with the 70-200 f/2.8 lens. The 24-70 is useful for wider shots of the entire team, especially during time-outs or breaks when they are meeting with the coach for strategy, and you want those wide-angle “huddle” shots. On a crop-sensor camera, the 24 is not really wide enough, you’ll need a true wide-angle. (I have the 16-35.)

Serve and Service Receive

Ok, let’s play some volleyball.

In the diagram below, you can see the layout of the court. The “X” is the player serving the ball. Theoretically, a player could serve from anywhere behind the back line of the court, but practically speaking the server will usually be inside the box. The “O”s are the players receiving the ball. Most teams these days are using the three-person receive. From the starred positions, you can see the angles involved in shooting the server, and the receivers.

All three positions have advantages and tradeoffs. Position 1 has some height – you’re up in the bleachers, shooting down a bit, that cleans up the background for the server. However, the angle on the service receive players (“O”) is not so good – you might get a good shot on the player A, but the B and C players are likely to become obscured by A.

Position 2 has a great angle on service receive players A and B, but now you run the danger of C becoming obscured by the pole, the antenna, and the net.

Position 3 is at the intersection of 1 and 2 – so it has a great angle on both the server, as well as the receiving players, but it is down lower, so you don’t have the height.

Tradeoffs.

In our next diagram we can see the typical formation of a game in action:

Let’s assume that the setter (the “O” near the net) has just received the ball, and is setting up for the outside hitter (the “O” that is coming in from outside the court). Depending on who you want shots of, there are a variety of positions you could shoot from.

#1 – you get a great shot down the net of the outside hitter going up for the ball. While it would seem that the setter is going to obscure the shot, most of the time the setter will move back off the net slightly as the hitter jumps, to cover defense in case the shot is blocked and comes back over the net. Note that you can be anywhere along the line of sight, and still get the same shot. It’s just that moving back and up will clean up your background. This is a good place to get those setter-to-middle-hitter shots as well.

#2 – If the hitter can get above the net, you get great shots of the hitter and the opposing blockers. Note that the follow through of the arm on a right-handed hitter will possibly obscure the face – things are happening quickly here, but you want to either capture the shot just as the hitter reaches the apex of the jump (when the arm is cocked back and is beginning to travel forward, but has not yet obscured the face) or immediately after contact with the ball, when the follow-through of the arm brings it down. With the second situation, the ball should be in-play with the opposing blockers, either going to one side, through, or over the block. (Again, if the hitters are getting above the net, shooting from here will also be good for the setter-to-middle-hitter shots.)

#3 – You get a great shot of the hitter’s face, through the arms of the opposing blockers. The best time to get this shot is just as the hitter hits the apex of the jump – there is a split second when the hitter’s head comes down to see the blockers and the court before the wrist snaps to hit the ball. (There is an “arc” of where you might want to be.) By timing it correctly, the hitter will be at the apex, and the blockers will be on their way up. This will give you the best angle on the hitter’s face.

#4 -Great shots of the defense covering the spiked ball – the dig.

#5 – Can see the blockers faces as they cover the spiked ball from the outside hitter.

After each game, the players switch court sides. So, you have a chance to get the “other half” of the game during the second game. (For example, in the previous diagram, the setter is usually going to have his/her back to you. In the second game, s/he would be facing you, allowing you to get some great shots.

If (and this is a huge if) you can get some significant height – like from an overhead catwalk, a balcony, or by using your Spiderman powers to crawl up the wall – then consider it – especially for those shots of the hitters. Any height you get will make the jumps look more impressive, and will give you that much more chance to catch the players faces in the picture.

Basketball

Basketball courts are bigger than volleyball courts. Since I usually have supplemental lighting (see the first article for links to articles on adding strobes to basketball) that lights up half the court, then I usually focus on half of the court at a time. Since the players switch sides halfway through the game, I do not have to move the lights. I can focus on shooting offense for half the game, and defense for the other half, resulting in a nice balance of shots.

Basketball is a really good time to learn to shoot with both eyes open. An errant ball, a player overshooting the net, all can result in having a large person suddenly (and violently) invading your personal space.

#1 – I can cover a lot from this position, and in fact it is probably my favorite on-court position. All of the offensive players are facing me, because I am close to the basket. If the point guard drives to the basket, I’ve got the shot. If an outside player does a 3-pointer, I’ve got the shot. If there’s a drive down the outside line when the offense is coming down the court, I’m in line to get the shot.

One of the only bad things about this position is that one of the referees tends to stand just out of bounds behind the basket, so they will be in your way quite often. Another disadvantage is that you do not have any height with this. In fact, I like to get down on my knees to shoot from this position, it does two things – it visually anchors the player to the floor, and any jumps look even more dramatic. Any dunks are easily covered from this position as well, especially if the player hangs off the rim with his tongue flapping in the wind.

You can also use this position for getting down-court shots of the defense. However, you’ll need at least a 70-200 lens for this to get the reach. If you have strobes set up to light only half the court, then that’s another issue.

#2 – Great for shots of the defense at work.

Another diagram:

#1 – This is great for getting shots of a layup, and some basket action shots. Note that most players are right handed, so they will naturally favor approaching the basket to the right side. If players are left handed, then shoot from the other side, or wait until they are playing the opposite end of the court.

I hope this helps with your basketball and volleyball shots!


Up next – Field sports – Football.

Always ask “Why?”
Every time you reach for your camera, ask yourself, “Why am I taking a picture? Why did I reach for my camera?” Most of the time it’s one of two things: Either you want to preserve a memory, or you saw something that sparked a memory in you and you want to record it. If you approach the picture with that in mind, you will take better, more meaningful pictures of your family.

My kids were putting out Halloween decorations last year and I grabbed my camera to record the memory. Don’t stand your kids up and take a snapshot. You have thousands of snapshots of your kids and they all look the same. Instead, ask “Why?” In this case, the reason I was taking pictures was because my children were putting out decorations. The decorations were the memory… the process. So, I focused on the decorations, not the children. My technical knowledge allows me to take the picture from the proper angle with the proper light, etc, but it’s my desire to preserve the memory of my children decorating the house that leads me to create an image that is unique and so much better than a snapshot.

One Saturday I walked into the kitchen and my youngest daughter  was painting.   I looked at her paint brush and  was immediately reminded of when  I was a boy. The ruined paint brush…. how many of those did  I  create as a kid? It’s a memory  I hadn’t thought about in decades and it made me smile. So, I grabbed my camera and recorded the image. This is a gift for my children… a memory recall button they can use 30 years from now to feel the same way I did when  I took the picture.

Have you ever watched people look at old family photographs? Have you noticed how  sometimes they talk about the stuff in the pictures more than the people? “I remember that couch!”   “That was my favorite mug!” I was once at a family gathering and watched my wife and her sister laugh and talk for 15 minutes about the “Holly Hobby” dolls they had as kids… all because their Mom showed them a picture and one of the dolls happened to be in the background. Looking through a photo album the faces all start to run together, it’s the things that make the memories special.

My daughter was decorating Easter Eggs last year when I took this picture. I sat there and fooled around with my camera for a minute or two because I wanted to capture what I was remembering about my own experience as a child. I was watching her and thinking about how great it was to be a kid, when the most important part of your day was deciding what colors to put on an egg. When I see this picture now it reminds me of that memory and hopefully it will do the same for my daughter one day.

One of my students said, “I’m taking a picture of my young son on horseback this weekend. How should I take the shot?” I thought about it a second and said, “Get low.   Take the shot from a low angle so that your son looks like he is really high because, to him, he is really high. Think about what it felt like when you were a kid and climbed on a horse, then try to preserve that feeling for your son. The reason why you are taking the picture is simple: To record  your son on a horse. But, if you think a little more you can record how your son feels on a horse.”

If you ask yourself   “Why?   What’s my real motivation? Why did I reach for my camera just now and not 10 minutes ago (or not at all) then you’ll begin to take better pictures of your family immediatly.   They’ll thank you for it later.

I also have a wide variety of friends who have kids active in sports, and who ask me to take pictures of their kids doing the things they do – which include sports. When you tote a camera everywhere, people assume you take pictures “everywhere”.

I was also fortunate enough to have the opportunity to serve as the Digital Media Director, responsible for photography and videography, for the U.S. Deaflympics Team at the recent Deaflympics in Taipei, Taiwan. (See the photos here.)

My goal with the next several articles is to help the budding sports photographer (or the involunteered sports photographer) get better pictures. In my experience, it usually takes two to three games of shooting before you learn the tempo of that particular game, and learn where to stand to improve your odds of getting a better shot. With proper instruction and guidance, my hope is that you will be walking away with keepers on the very first game.

Here’s the sports that I’ve covered

• Volleyball (court and beach)
• Basketball
• Football (American)
• Swimming
• Athletics (track and field)

General guidelines about Gear

First, you don’t need the latest Canon 1D Mark III, Mark IV, or the Nikon D3, D300 to shoot good sports pictures. Yes, these cameras have features that make it easier to handle a wide range of situations that you may encounter – especially low-light situations. These cameras have remarkable high ISO capabilities, which can provide action-freezing photos when there’s not a lot of light bouncing around.

The interesting conundrum is that the better the schools, the better lighting they’re going to have in the gymnasiums and on the field – so the less likely you are to need the high ISOs. Smaller schools with smaller budgets are going to have darker gymnasiums, less powerful lights on the football field, etc. You might want to consider auxiliary lighting for these situations. (We’ll talk about that, too.)

If all else fails – consider renting additional gear for those special occasions. My local rental shop will let me pick up rental gear on Friday afternoon after 2:00, and as long as I deliver it Monday morning before noon, they only charge me for a single day’s rental. If you can bundle up and cover several events that weekend, then it’s worth it. I’d also like to put in a plug for Lens Rentals (www.lensrentals.com) — they were one of our sponsors for the Deaflympics, and they did an amazing job of meeting our needs.

Camera Settings

Most action photos should be taken with a shutter speed of at least 1/125^th of a second, and preferably even faster. Image Stabilized lenses (or VR, for the Nikon shooters) will help a lot. The manufacturers claim a 2 to 3 stop improvement with IS. This means that an image stabilized lens shooting at 1/125^th will (should) deliver a picture as sharp as a non-IS lens shooting at 1/500^th.

Depending on the venue and the lighting, I set my camera on either Manual, or Aperture Priority. If the lighting is even across my entire field of view (indoor court sports, for example, or a cloudy overcast day outside), then it’s Manual. If I find that there are wide variations in the lighting across my field of view (for example, if I’m shooting outside sports and half the field is in the sun, and half is in shadow) then I’ll set it to Av.

My aperture is usually as wide as I can go – f/2.8. Sometimes I have better luck with 4.0, if I find that the players are moving very fast relative to my position.

What this means is that a player might be moving down the court or field very quickly – but if they are moving perpendicular to me, then a narrow aperture is going to result in a sharp picture, because they are staying within the narrow “zone” of focus as I pan the camera from side to side.

If they are moving quickly towards me (a basketball player driving down the court, or a football player rushing) then I will consider going to a 4.0 for two reasons – with the greater depth of field, I am more likely to get them to be sharp in the picture, and when I am in a position where they are coming directly at me, the background usually is much farther away than if I am perpendicular to the action, so a f/4.0 aperture is still going to result in a nicely bokeh-ed background. An example of this might be standing past the end zone in football, looking for that oncoming rush through the line of scrimmage, or being at the end of the court in basketball, looking for that drive down the line.

If you only have variable aperture lenses (typically these are the lenses that come with consumer and prosumer grade cameras) that vary between f/3.5 and f/5.6 – then you have to make some sacrifices. You can shoot aperture priority, open it up as wide as possible, and let the camera set the shutter speed, or you can shoot in manual, with a constant aperture of f/5.6. Having the constant aperture of f/2.8 is why professional photographers buy the expensive lenses – they let in more light, and allow faster shutter speeds with lower light situations.

You should set your ISO to be as low as possible, while still having a shutter speed fast enough to freeze the action. It’s a delicate balancing act. I’ve shot indoor basketball with a Canon 30D, f/2.8 lenses, at 1000 ISO, and gotten good pictures. This was with crappy tungsten lighting in the gym, no strobes. When I’ve had to bump it up to ISO 1250, 1600, the quality of the pictures took a noticeable nose dive.

Most photography books will advise you to “expose to the right” – bumping your exposure up against the right side of the histogram. In sports, I’ve found that sometimes by purposely underexposing my pictures by a stop (or even two) results in increased saturation in the photos, and allows the shutter speed to be quicker – resulting in a sharper photo. Yes, I lose detail in the shadows – but I get the shot. These are your choices: is it better to get a perfectly exposed blurry photo, or an underexposed photo (that I can bring back in post-processing) that is sharp? I prefer sharp.

It might seem obvious, but it bears repeating, you should be shooting RAW at all times. If you want to shoot RAW+JPEG, that’s fine – but those sharp underexposed photos are going to be easier to bring back to acceptable exposure levels in RAW than in JPEG.

My camera also has three different focusing modes: single shot, AI Focus, and AI Servo. Here are my thoughts on each one:

Single Shot: Total control. I can predict the action, pre-focus on a certain point (if I turn off autofocusing) and when I pull the trigger, I get the shot. The downside is that if it’s on autofocus and the subject is moving quickly, then I sometimes get a blurry photo.

AI Servo: This is great for photos of fast-moving subjects. The camera will “predict” where the subject is going to be when the shutter pops, and pre-focus to that point. The problem for me is that I use single-point focusing most of the time. The combination of single-point focusing and AI Servo means that the subject must be centered in the shot – every time. This often results in static, boring photos.   I would rather have some space around the subject – space ahead of a running football player, for example. By using single point auto focus, the camera will focus on something off in the distance, and I miss the shot.

AI Focus: This is supposed to be a combination of the two – it works like Single shot until the subject starts moving, then it will go into servo mode. My issues with these are the same as above – I like to choose my composition.

Auxiliary Lighting

If you find that you cannot get sharp pictures with the constraints of your camera, your lenses, the ISO capabilities of your camera, and the amount of light in the venue, it’s time to consider adding lights.   Most of us cannot afford to rewire a gymnasium or a football field with additional spotlights, so we need to use strobes.

I was talking with the Superintendent of the school where my kids go (The Maryland School for the Deaf, in Frederick, MD), and he was asking me about how the photos were going for the Homecoming football game. It was a night game – and the field was rather dark. It was misting, not quite raining, so I wasn’t about to bring out battery packs and strobes. (In my experience, water and electricity are not a good combination.) On top of that, the home team was wearing black uniforms. As a result, the pictures were not as good as I would have liked. The field had 4 large poles with lights (not bad for a high school) – but I told him we needed to put up an additional four to six light poles in order to get really good pictures, and I asked him when he’d be able to work that out.

“Sure, Bill, so you can get better pictures of your son playing football, yep, I’ll just slip that in the budget as a line item for next year, I think a million will cover it, we’ll see how it works out.” (I did point out that I was getting pictures of ALL the boys playing, but I still didn’t get a warm fuzzy feeling that the light towers were going to be in place for next year’s Homecoming football game. But, I digress.)

If you do need auxiliary lighting in the form of strobes, there are two ways to go – battery powered, and AC (wall) powered. I have used speedlights (the small battery powered flashes typically seen on-camera, but I use them off-camera) as well as AC powered strobes – I have Alien Bee strobes. I also have a Vagabond II, which turns the AC-powered Alien Bee flashes into portable battery-powered strobes. Portability is a big deal with me, and the work I normally do.

For more information on lighting gymnasiums, there’s the Strobist website, with articles here, here and here:

• http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/04/on-assignment-prep-basketball.html

• http://strobist.blogspot.com/2007/02/on-assignment-speedlighting-college-gym.html

• http://strobist.blogspot.com/2007/03/q-speedlighting-gym.html

David does a far better job of teaching off-camera lighting than I could. I strongly recommend starting with his Lighting 101 series, and then branching out into the more esoteric applications, like sports.

When you read the articles, make sure you read the comments — sometimes there is a lot of additional information in the comments, pointers to other articles, etc.

Access to the Best Places to Shoot

I’m assuming that you’re shooting elementary through high school sports or perhaps a smaller college or university, where access to the venue is not a problem. If you’re in a Big Name High School, College, or University, then you may not be able to get on the court, or on the field.

One thing I’ve found that helps with access is to make friends with the Athletic Director (AD) of the school, as well as the coaches of the various teams. Approach them during quiet times (Note: 10 minutes before the game starts is not an ideal time), and explain that you’re interested in shooting pictures of their teams. If you offer to provide the pictures back to the teams – for publicity purposes, for the school yearbook, for the walls of the AD or the coach, then you’re much more likely to get the access that you want.

A free print here and there is a remarkable application of grease to the political machinery. Especially when Costco now has 20×30 prints of spectacular quality for $8.99! One of those gracing the AD’s door will go a long way.

Post-processing

One thing about shooting sports – you’re going to have a LOT of photos when you get done. I highly recommend that you find some way to sort and manage all these photos. I use Adobe Lightroom to manage the files, and do most of my post-processing. Others use Photo-Mechanic, Bridge, etc.

The reason I chose Lightroom was because it was able to manage the files, AND do rudimentary edits. Over the years that I’ve been using it, they have added more and more features to LR – so that now I rarely go into Photoshop at all. The adjustment brushes are an awesome feature that allow you to quickly dodge and burn. As of the writing of this article, Lightroom 3 Beta is available for free – check it out.

Additional resources

• Matt Kloskowski’s blog on LR – http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/
• Gene McCullagh’s LR site – http://lightroomsecrets.com/

Delivery of the Images

One thing you do not want to do is to become a CD duplication house. By this, I mean that everybody that sees you taking photos on the sidelines is going to assume that your pictures are easily duplicated and deliverable on CD. Yes, they are … but I’m not in the CD duplication business. Yes, it only takes 5 minutes to burn a CD – but it takes longer to do all the work leading up to that point, and to deliver the CD.

So, when people say, “Can you?”   I say, “I don’t, sorry.”

I use Smugmug as a delivery platform and print sales manager. I go through my photos, and I upload them to Smugmug.   I then send out an email to all the parents whose emails I have, I drop a line in my Facebook, I might blog a few selects and then point to the rest.

After that, the parents are free to go in and order what they like. I do watermark the images, and I do allow medium-sized web downloads for free. This may or may not cut into my print sales – but I’d rather have the advertising out there than spend all my time chasing people who copy/paste illegally off the website.

There are other alternatives to Smugmug – I use it because I’ve been using it, if you know what I mean.

Last, I want to give a shout out to the folks at Sportsshooter.com – who have a huge number of helpful articles, videos, etc. – designed to help the professional sports shooter.

Subsequent articles will focus on the various individual sports; next up is volleyball and basketball.

If you have questions, experiences, or additional tips – leave them in the comments!

The first thing you want to do is make sure that your camera and flash are both set to 1/3 increments. It should take 3 clicks to move your shutter speed a full stop, 3 clicks of the dial to move your aperture a full stop, 3 clicks to move your ISO a full stop  and 3 clicks to move your flash power a full stop. If your camera isn’t already set up this way, odds are that you can change it in the menu settings (I know you can with Canon).

The second thing you need to do is work out a default setup for flash portraits. It’s simple … you need to have a basic setup for your camera and flash committed to memory. This will give you a starting point for any off-camera flash portrait. It’s easy to do, just set up your flash (with umbrella) in your living room with your camera on a tripod and a remote release. Then figure it out by trial and error, taking pictures of yourself (I have tons of pictures of me. Sometimes  I just throw them on the bed and roll around in myself … but I digress). For example, I know that with my camera on ISO 800, flash at -8 power, f-stop 5.6 and the light about 4 steps (literally, walking steps) from the subject … I’ll get a properly exposed shot. That’s my starting point. I use this as my default setting when taking church formals. (When you are figuring your default setup, don’t do it outside. Do it indoors where your subject will be dark without the flash.)

Let’s be clear about this: There are some very precise formula’s for determining exposure. Many involve an incident light meter, tape measure, slide rule and Cray Super Computer. These methods are the purist way of determining the exact ratio of light for a portrait. I’m not a purist.   I’m a wedding and portrait photographer who needs to be able to set up a shot in less than a minute so I tend to work a little fast and loose with the numbers. This is much easier to do if you know how to read your camera’s histogram and you have your camera’s LCD screen set to Highlight Alert (“The blinkies”).

Now that I have my default settings, let’s grab one of The World’s Most Photographed Children © and go outside.

Using my default settings I adjust my shutter speed to get the correct exposure. I like my backgrounds about 1 stop dark, so that’s what I expose for. As you probably guessed already, ISO 800 is way to high for an outdoor portrait.

Next I drop my ISO to 100 and adjust my shutter speed again. Here’s the part that’s important: I immediately reach over to my off-camera flash that’s sitting on a stand and change the output from -8 to o. I’ve changed my ISO 3 stops darker (800-400-200-100) so I need to make my flash 3 stops brighter to compensate (-8, -4, -2, 0). Now I am still at my default settings.

Before I go any further, I need to address sync-speed. My flash sync speed is 1/250 so I need to get to that speed (or lower). This is where the 3-click settings on your camera come in handy. I simply dial down the shutter speed 3 clicks to 1/250, then I dial up the aperture 3 clicks to 8.0.   You can do this all day as long as you always use the same number of clicks each way.

Time to turn on the flash and take a shot:

That’s a pretty good exposure but it still seemed a little dull to me.   It’s probably exactly right but I tend to overexpose the face a little when shooting outdoors because I just like the look.   So, I asked my model to take two tiny steps closer to the light….

That’s it!   I know it might sound hard when you read it on the page but if you just practice a little you will find that you can set up a portrait with off-camera lighting and ambient balance in about 30 seconds no matter where you are.   Because you always start from the same place with your default setup, it’s just a matter of adding and subtracting “clicks.”

If you look at any good portrait photographer who works primarily on location you’ll see a common thread. They have a knack for looking at the surroundings and figuring out the best way to place their subjects. Being able to manipulate your surroundings  to your advantage  will help you in every type of photography that you do. In wedding photography,  it can be the difference between a good picture and a great one.

With that in mind, I thought I might post some pictures from a recent wedding and talk about how I manipulated  my surroundings to create, what I think, are better pictures. I’m just going to concentrate on posed shots this time around and maybe later I’ll do a post on candids.

This first picture was taken just before the bride  left the dressing room to go and start the ceremony. We were already running 10 minutes late  and the wedding planner was dragging her out the door when I stopped her.

“Can I just have 30 seconds?” I quickly closed the door and opened the blinds.   Then I said, “somebody turn out the lights.”   This shot is nothing but window light and a gray wall.

Here’s a picture of the church  where the wedding was being held. It’s the Pasadena Community Church in St. Petersburg, Florida. I walked into  it cold, having never shot a wedding there before.

Let me just say that you should never be shy about going to a wedding rehearsal so that you can get a good feel for the church. In this case I wasn’t able to go to the rehearsal and so I only had a few minutes to figure out my plan  before the ceremony started. Truth be told, ceremonies don’t change much and as a result there aren’t usually too many surprises when it comes to  shooting them. For me, the challenge is trying to figure out a creative way to take the formals after the ceremony.

You don’t have to be a professional photographer to see the obvious focal point in this church. You just don’t run into a pipe organ like  that everyday.

After the wedding and family portraits (which were, predictably, shot on the altar),  I moved the bride and groom into the main aisle of the church. I brought them far enough up the main aisle so that I could shoot  with a wide lens  and capture the pipe organ and cross in the picture. Here’s the final product:

It’s not unusual for me to get  strange looks from people when I start moving them into the aisle to take a picture. It just seems like a stupid place to take a picture to most people but that’s because they’re not looking at the surroundings the way I am. I would’ve dragged this bride out into the street if that’s what it took for me to get a picture of the pipe organ and cross. Some weddings you really have to stretch to find the shot, but not here.

Next, I decided to move in for some close-ups. I had noticed the stained glass windows earlier and this was my chance to incorporate them into a shot. The positioning of the windows made it impossible for me to place my bride and groom in front of them, so I had to bring the windows to my bride and groom. I reached into my case, pulled out my second camera (which I keep loaded with a 70-200 mm,   f2.8, IS  lens), and backed up about 20 feet. The zoom lens made the windows look much larger and enabled me to get this shot with the same light and in the same position as the previous one. A completely different shot from the last one in about 30 seconds. (Just so you know, I rarely change lenses during a wedding. I prefer to use  two cameras and find it easier to switch my flash or my radio remote between the two than to switch my lenses on one.)

I was just about to pack up my gear and go home at the end of the reception when I thought that I’d really like to have a shot of the bride and her bridesmaids that was a little more fun than the formal stuff I had taken back  at the church. So, I went up to the bride and I said

“Would you like to get your girls and meet me in the bathroom?”

The great thing about this wedding was that I had a bride who loves me (I know what your saying, “Oh Booray… everybody loves you! True, I know). When she hired me she said, “I told my fiancé he could have whatever he wanted at the wedding. He could pick the theme, the food, the location, whatever. I only want to pick two things: my dress and my photographer.”

When you have a bride like that you know that she’s going to do whatever you ask her to do, and in this case, convince her friends to do it too.

The problem was that the reception was a small beach hotel. There was nothing about this hotel that was glamorous. It doesn’t have to be glamorous it’s on the beach. However, I had noticed that the bathrooms had great tile so that’s where I took the bridesmaids for the final shot of the night. They were great about it, they started posing and having a good time and I ended up with a really fun picture of the bride and her friends isolated from the rest of the wedding. I’ve found that if you can get a group of girls away from everyone else they will really loosen up and start to pose for you. Even in the bathroom.

I think that many times it just takes experience to really start using your surroundings. In the beginning you can be so focused on the mechanics of the shot that you don’t have time to notice what’s around you and get creative. Don’t be afraid to stop what you’re doing and just look around. People hire you because you have an artistic “eye,” they won’t mind if you take a minute to use it.

Photography, like all art, is subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, etc, etc. And with Photoshop becoming such an integral part of the work process, it’s getting to the point where the old “rules” for good photography are being tossed out the window. I think that’s just fine, and I’ll tell you why.

Before I became the world-famous photographer that we all know and love, I was a Disc-Jockey. I worked in radio and nightclubs all over the country and was a firm believer in the “rules” that govern the trade (that’s right, there are rules). For example, when working a nightclub, you start with a song that has a low “beats per minute” count. Then, you mix into a song that’s a little faster, then another one faster still, until you eventually have reached a plateau and your dance floor is really dancing fast. Then, you drop back down to a slower song and start all over again. Your dancers wander over to the bar to get refreshed (cha-ching!).

At one point in my career I was hired to open a nightclub in Dallas and was having a meeting with the corporate DJ (yes, there is such a thing) and the other DJ who would be working the club with me. At one point during the meeting, the corporate guy made reference to the natural progression of the dance floor and the other jock said, “Why?”

At first I thought, “Oh my God, this guy doesn’t know how to spin.” I was wrong.   He knew all the rules, he just didn’t believe they were always necessary.   “Why can’t you jump all over the place with the music, as long as it works?” he asked. I thought he was nuts. That’s not the way it worked.

You can probably guess what happened next. We opened the club and I followed the rules while the other DJ went nuts, reacting to the crowd, trying new things, etc. It didn’t always work but when it did it was awesome … unlike any other club in town. Suddenly  I was forced to realize that whatever works is the right thing. Our nightclub soon got a reputation as a “party place” because you never knew what would happen next, you just knew it would be fun and fresh. I quickly began to toss out the rules I had lived by for so long.

Whenever I find myself critiquing a photograph I remember that experience. It’s important to know the rules because they will help you take better pictures, but they are only a starting point. From there you must find your own way and develop a style that is unique to you. If that means that you blow-out the highlights or crop outside the grid … so be it. If your photography sells and is liked by your clients, then it’s good. Even if it’s not well received, it’s still yours. This is one of the reasons that I never participate in group critique on a photography website. I can’t tell you how to make your picture better, only how to make it more like something I took, which isn’t necessarily better!

Take my favorite pet peeve: Selective color. I’m not a fan. I think it is overused and almost always done poorly. I frequently get the impression that the photographer has done it simply because they can and it adds one more “creative” image to the mix.   “Ohhh…. the picture is black and white but the flowers are in color!”   That’s fine where the flowers are the focus of the shot but I see it so many times where the flowers are just a tiny part (my personal favorite is the full formal wedding party picture with just the flowers in color). But here’s the thing:   I don’t make the rules. Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s “bad”… just that I don’t like it.   Every great artist has been told that they were wrong to paint the way they did.   “Selective Color” may be the next big thing for all I know.

My point to this whole rambling post is this:   Don’t always follow the rules. Don’t always believe that everyone else knows more about what’s “good” than you do (unless it’s me because I am the bomb).   And, be careful when you ask for advice because any critique you receive will be specific to that person’s personal style, not yours.